INSIDE LOOK AT CANDIDATES : RELAXING WITH FAMILY, DOLE'S A `SWEATER MAN'.

Byline: Sandra Sobieraj Associated Press 

When the Hanford family draws names for Christmas presents, there is one everybody dreads: Bob, the brother-in-law. Uncle Bob. Bob Dole.

``You don't want to get him clothes, and you're not sure about the electronic gear he already has,'' explains John Hanford, the older brother of Dole's wife, Elizabeth.

``He has an aide to take care of stuff because of his disability, so that rules out briefcases, portfolios, memo books,'' Hanford says. But in most ways the man who wants to be president is like any other brother-in-law.

He's a house guest on holiday weekends - the early riser who ventures downstairs fully dressed, heading first for the newspaper and then for breakfast.

Well maybe not ``fully'' dressed for a candidate, as in button-down shirt and jacket.

Around family, Hanford confides, ``Bob's a sweater man.''

The longtime Kansas legislator, now Republican presidential nominee, has been known as Majority Leader in the Senate, as Beltway Insider, even as Richard Nixon's Hatchet Man. But Sweater Man?

It's the personal side of Dole known only to family and a handful of decades-old friends. And, while he is described in superlatives as a loyal and thoughtful man, a sweater is as warm and fuzzy as this stoic Russell, Kan., native gets.

``He's somebody you just know is there - supportive but not cloying. He's not a Chatty Cathy,'' says Sheila Burke, Dole's closest adviser and a 19-year veteran of his Senate office. It was there that she received a phone call in 1989 that her father died. Dole found her at her desk and laid a quiet hand on her shoulder.

``What can we do? Help you get a plane ticket? Give you a ride home? Get you to the airport?'' Burke recalls Dole asking. It was, like most of Dole's gestures, generous and sincere - and ever-practical.

Over the years, Dole's mother-in-law, Mary Cathey Hanford, reaped the spoils of his pragmatic thoughtfulness in the form of a dishwasher, microwave and toaster oven.

Kansas City steaks and fruit were Dole's most memorable Christmas gifts to longtime confidante Tom Korologos, who describes their friendship as a comfortable, unspoken pact. If they're on a plane together and Dole wants peanuts, he hands over the foil sack. Korologos opens it and hands it back without a word to the man whose right arm was shattered in World War II.

And if a friend isn't there to help? ``He'll get along without the peanuts. He doesn't want to trouble people and he doesn't want to broadcast his disability,'' said Korologos, a lobbyist who's known Dole since the Nixon days and is a frequent guest of the Doles for Sunday brunch.

Those brunches at Washington hotels are the most socializing Dole and his wife do. They guard their off-hours at home - often spent watching television - and do very little entertaining in their cramped Watergate apartment.

With little patience for deep-thinking philosophic rambles, Dole talks in shorthand to friends and staff alike.

Russ Townsley, publisher of Dole's hometown newspaper, who has known him for nearly 50 years, remembers the two of them settling down after dinner with news magazines while their wives washed dishes: ``He'd mention something, I'd have some kind of comeback, then we'd go on reading.''

Another kind of silence meets friends who curse in front of Dole - or venture an off-color joke. ``You do it at your own peril,'' warns Korologos. ``They don't go over. You get a cold, icy stare.''

Without grandchildren of his own, Dole studiously remembers each of his nieces, nephews, grandnieces and grandnephews on their high school graduation with $50 tucked inside a personally signed Hallmark card.

Back in Russell, sisters Gloria and Norma Jean are remembered on every birthday and Christmas with more cards and more money, ``so we can go out and get something we need,'' says Gloria.

The sisters reciprocate with Dole's sentimental favorites - homemade ice cream, fried chicken and pickled eggs - whenever he sweeps into town.

The last time was in August, when Dole announced Jack Kemp as his running mate. Making a special trip to the family home that Dole still owns, Gloria arranged for red roses to greet him from an ancient white vase on the hall table. It was the same white vase that held the red roses 2nd Lt. Robert J. Dole had wired to his mother more than 50 years ago from his Army post.

``He had tears in his eyes when he saw it there,'' Gloria said. ``I knew he would, because it's a touch of Mom.''

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Photo

Photo: Bob Dole and his wife, Elizabeth, watch on TV as heis nominated at the August convention.

Associated Press